Cataract is a general term of an affection of the eye that leads to a loss of vision and in the extreme to blindness by clouding of the normally clear lens of the eye. It is the major cause of blindness in the world with it affecting more than 100 million people. Due to the fact that its major cause is age, it is expected that with the population's average age continuing to increase the number of cataracts will continue to increase substantially in the future.
Effective treatment of cataract is only possible by surgical intervention, whereby the natural lens of the eye is removed through an incision in the cornea and replaced with an artificial lens, often also referred to as “intraocular lens”. In preparation of surgery current state-of-the-art surgical methods employ methods for eye mapping so as to approximate the refractive power best suited to the respective patient.
Even though cataract surgery is one of the most widely used and safest surgical procedures it is not without specific post-surgery problems. It frequently happens that the refractive power of the implanted intraocular lens (IOL) is insufficient for restoring good vision. Such problems may, for example, be caused by changes in eye geometry in consequence of the surgery as well as irregular wound healing and positioning errors that result in the artificial lens not having the optimal optical properties. As a result the patient will still require corrective vision aids, e.g. glasses, to be able to see correctly. In some cases the resulting refractive power of the implanted artificial lens is so far removed from the required refractive power that further surgery will be required. Particularly for aged persons this is not desirable because the body's capability for healing are reduced with increasing age. Furthermore, there is the risk of attracting endophthalmitis, an inflammation of the eye, which can even lead to a complete loss of vision or worse, loss of the eye.
There is therefore a need in the health sector for optically active devices, and particularly artificial intraocular lenses, that would allow for non-invasive adjustment of refractive power after implantation of the lens, thereby preferably further reducing the need for post-surgery vision aids.
Some developments in this sense have already been made, as for example evidenced by WO 2007/033831 A1.
However, the compounds disclosed therein suffer from being too stiff and too brittle so that they can't be rolled or folded and are thus not fit to be implanted by state of the art cataract surgical methods, particularly by state of the art micro-incision cataract surgical methods.
Consequently, it is an objective of the present application to provide for novel compounds suitable for ophthalmic devices.
It is also an objective of the present application to provide for compounds, the optical properties of which may be changed, preferably by non-invasive techniques.
It is a further objective of the present application to provide for novel compounds that are more flexible than the currently known compounds, preferably in combination with being suitable for ophthalmic devices.
Further advantages and objectives of the compounds of the present application will be evident to the skilled person from the following detailed description as well as from the examples.